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User blog:AwesomeEthan48/AwesomeEthan48's Custom Album Cover Tutorial
Have you seen the Custom Album Covers I (and other people) did or official Death Battle music track covers and thought to yourself, "Man, how do I make one of those things?" Well my friend, you've come to the right place! Let the Death Battle Wiki's resident artist guide you on making your very own Custom Album Cover! Step 1: Getting the Necessary Items Before you can start working on your Custom Album Cover, you'll need a few things in order to do so: Item 1: A Drawing App of Some Kind While you can do a rough draft on paper, going digital is the best idea for making your CAC. I'd suggest ibisPaint X, as that's the program I use and it's gonna be the program used extensively throughout this tutorial. Item 2: The Album Cover Background Yeah, this one's kind of important; how can you make a final version of your CAC without the background?! Thankfully, you can use either one of these album cover backgrounds I have with me, but I'll be using the one on the left for this tutorial. I'd highly suggest using the full size of 1080x1080 in case you want to add minor details. Item 3: This 8-Line Grid This one isn't necessary, but I'd highly recommend it. This grid thing will help you if you want to center a layer. Item 4: The Text Below the Title The second-to-last thing you need before starting is the text underneath the title of each official (and unnoficial) track cover. Unless you're me, change the "AwesomeEthan48" to either Brandon Yates, Therewolf Media, or your username (I'd highly suggest doing that last one so people know you've done it). Item 5: An Idea This last one's VERY important, probably the most important thing to have before starting your CAC. Besides, you need an idea to get started in the first place! A good Custom Album Cover idea consists of 2 things: # An image that refrences the 2 combatants (or more if it's a CAC for a battle royale) # A title that references the combatants in some way (i.e., Retro Rivals references the fact that Mario and Sonic have been rivals since the Console Wars in the 90s, a time of retro appeal looking back at it) For this tutorial, I'll be doing this request by 1pizza877 (and I'll combine the two proposed ideas), but you can do any idea you have, whether it's your most wanted matchup or a request by someone. Step 2: Setting Up Now that you've got everything, you must now organize them fo drawing purposes. The idea is an exception, as you can store that information in your head. For reference, this is how the other things should be sorted in ibisPaint, color-coded for your convenience: The Text Below the Title and Album Cover Background are hidden so that they don't get in the way of drawing the actual track cover itself. As for the blank layer, you can have as many as you need (i.e., one for a rough draft, one for final outline, one for coloring, one for shading, etc.) Step 3: VERY Rough Draft Now that everything's in place, you're finally readdy to start working on your Custom Album Cover, starting with the rough draft! While I usually go into a CAC with an idea already i my head, you may need to plan out what elements of a character goes where. That's where the rough draft comes in! The rough draft let's you draw rough sketches of the elements that reference your fighters and move them to a place you think works well. It may take a few layers if you have sereval elements you want to put. Once you're done with that, merge all those layers together and center it. I'd also suggest making the rough draft 50% visible, as shown below: Do keep in mind that this is the rough dtaft, so feel free to move elemts around if you don't feel like they're in the right place. Step 4: Drawing the Outlines Now that you got the rough draft, it's time to start drawing the outlines for each and every part of the track cover. "But Ethan, how can I make it not look like a crappy MS Paint job?" Well, I'm glad you asked! Reference Pics Reference pictures/reference pics are pictures of the elements you're including that you can use help you in the drawing process. With reference pics, you can: *Draw the element based on what you see on the reference pic. *Put the reference pic in the middle, set it to 50% opacity, and trace it on a seperate layer. *Put the reference pic in as a part of the track image. You want to aim for that 1st method as much as possible. However, don't feel bad if you need to trace the image on a seperate layer if there's small details you want to include or if you're not that good at drawing. I use the 2nd method all the time for cetain elements of cetrain CACs, so it's fair game. You can do the 3rd method, try to do that as little as possible. Some elements from some of my CACs (the Monado Arts in "Power of the Blades" and Punisher's skull logo in "Dreaded Punishers", for example) are PNGs I used because I was too lazy to recreate them nearly 1:1. But if you're someone like Austin James A who uses just PNGs (esspecially in uncreative ways), that that's just being EXTREMELY lazy, so don't do that. I'd also suggest using ibisPaint's built in Straight Ruler for perfectly straight lines, Circle Ruler for perfect circles, and Elliptical Ruler for perfect curves (though that last one is optional). Also, you're not limited to just black when doing the outline, so feel free to use different colors for certain outlines of elements (that make sense, of course!). Here's an example of what the outlines should look like: But, like I said before, feel free to move and resize the elements of your piece (in this case, the actual Elements of Harmony) if it doesn't feel like they're in the right place. Also, feel free to add elements you've drawn seperately to your Custom Album Cover, as seen here: Step 4.5: Changing Outline Colors THIS STEP IS COMPLETELY OPTIONAL, SO FEEL FREE TO IGNORE THIS ONE AND SKIP TO STEP 5! Sometimes, the outline for an element (in this case, the flags and flag poles) aren't in the color you want. Now, don't fret, you don't have to trace the element in the color you want on a seperate layer. All you have to do is use ibisPaint's built in color changers! Here's how you find them (read the captions under these two images): After all that, use what the "Hue, Saturation, Lightness" or "Change Drawing Color" option has to change the outline color of your selected element, as seen in this before and after comparison below: Like I said, this step's optional, so if you prefer all of your outlines be black, feel free to skip this one. Step 5: Coloring and Detailing Once you're done all of that, you're finally ready to add color! I'd suggest using the "Bucket" feature to fill in most of the empty space within the outlines and using the "Brush" feature to get into the nooks and crannies that the "Bucket" can't get into. You can also add some details and/or elements you didn't draw in Step 4, as seen here: Step 6: Shading and Effects THIS IS ANOTHER OPTIONAL STEP, SO FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS ONE AND MOVE ON TO STEP 7! Now, while you can just call the track image "finished" as of Step 5, if you're someone like me, you want to add some pazazz to your piece (if you want, of course) via shading and some effects! Shading For shading, I'd suggest using ibisPaint's "Magic Wand" feature or "Clipping" feature (seen below) to keep your shading from bleeding out. For this part of Step 6, I'm adding some gold shine to the flag poles, as seen in this before and after comparison here: The shading also helps gives a sense of lighting, life, and depth to your track image. Effects Effects (which I include inner glows, outer glows, and shines, among other things) are also what can give your track image some pazazz. While you can do the glows manually (as seen in my "Keys to the Duel", "Chaotic Discord"' and "Stars of the Universe" CACs), you can make your life easier by using the "Inner Glow" and/or "Outer Glow" features found in the "Style" section of the "Filter" option. For the shine, you can choose either one of these two brushes fohnd in the "Brush" section. For the color of the shine, if you use "Light 4", you must make the color white. However, the white part of "Glitter 1 - Add" stays white no matter what color you choose, which means you're not limited to white when using that brush. I highly suggest you use "Glitter 1 - Add" over "Light 4", but you can choose wither one. You can also rotate the shine by using ibisPaint's "Transform" feature. Here's a before and after comparison to show what utilizing both the glow and shine look like: Keep in mind you don't have to do both the glow and shine. You can do either one (or neither one, if you want!). Step 7: The Title Alright, you're in the homestretch now! All that's left to do is the title! But before you do that, make the "Text Below the Title" and "8-Line Grid" visible, with the latter being moved towards the top of the layers, as seen here: Once you've done that, select the "Text" feature and tap anywhere on the canvas. You should see a button labelled "Add Text" (see left pic). Press that, and you'll arrive at what I dub "the Text Maker" (see right pic). Once you've loaded up "the Text Maker", you'll notice a couple of sections at the bottom. Here's what you need to do for the first 3: *'Text': Change the font to "Default (Bold)" and set the text position to "Center" and "Horizontal". *'Size': Set the text size at 100. This will be the base text size, so if the title doesn't take one line when you stretch the text box all the way, yoy can shrink the size until the title fits on one line. *'Style': Set the text color as white, the text stroke as black, and the stroke size (as labelled as the outline of the letter A) at 10. You don't need to worry about the other sections, meaning you can type out your CAC title! Make sure you type it out in full caps and, as I stated above, extend the textbox to it's fullest length (or width) to make sure the title fits on one line, like this: Coloration, Movement, and Transformation Now, for this tutorial, the title will be in the style of the titles prior to Appetite for Greed, meaning at least one word in the title will be red (unless we're talking about one-word titles like Marvelous, in which case leave the entire title white). Before you can recolor some words and change the shape of the text, you need to rasterize it first. Otherwise, you can't do anything with it. The photo below shows you how to find the rasterization option. Basically, all you have to do is press the sideways ellipsis button (1), then finding the "Rasterize" button (2) and pressing it. After the rasterization process, you can now use the "Bucket" feature to fill in the letters you want red, as seen here: Once you're done with that, use the "Transform" feature (it's the button with the 4 arrows), specifically the "Perspective" section with the "Perspection" setting turned off, to stretch, resize, and center the title. The size of the titles for all my CACs vary, but this is roughly where you want it. Once you're satisfied with the title placement, hit the green check mark. After all of that, make the "8-Line Layer" invisible, make the "Album Cover Background" visible, do some clean up, and voila! You should be done with your Custom Album Cover! If you're wondering why my signature and the date of completion are at the top two corners, it's because I usually do that so that people know I did it. You don't have to do those things. Final Thoughts I hope this tutorial helped you improve on drawing your own Custom Album Covers. If not, I hope this gave you slme inspiration to do so. If you really don't want to draw it, you can always request a CAC to me! Just don't overwhelm me with requests. I have a life, people! Anyway, thanks for reading and special thanks to Fox-Shock for inspiring me to do this! Category:Blog posts